


We Live As We Dream

by FroldGapp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Galra Keith (Voltron), Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Kuron, M/M, SHEITH - Freeform, blade of marmora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 19:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12372615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FroldGapp/pseuds/FroldGapp
Summary: They should never have let him go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Joseph Conrad quote.

The corpse was cooling in the Black Lion’s hangar. Nobody had touched it. Nobody dared. Shiro – the real Shiro – sat wild-eyed and distraught on the bridge. His armour was still smeared with blood.

 Coran offered a steaming cup of tea, which Shiro accepted with trembling hands.

‘Shiro,’ Pidge folded herself on the seat next to him timidly, as if he might vanish again at any moment. ‘What happened?’

A tired shake of his head like a weary Clydesdale. ‘I don’t know. I was… I was somewhere strange, somewhere only Black knows. Then I heard a sound like a- a cry or a shout, and I was back in Black’s cockpit. With him- _it-_ in the chair.’

‘How did we not know?’ Lance’s voice was shaking horribly. His face was bloodless and drawn. ‘How could we not have known? Shiro… I’m sorry.’ He fought tears, hands wringing. ‘We’re sorry.’

Hunk sniffled and pulled Lance against him. ‘Guys, come on. We’ve barely had time to breathe.’

Shiro’s face fell into a severe frown at that. ‘I should have been here. I’m sorry.’

Lance was fast to jump in and assure Shiro that, no, they weren’t busy. Not as Shiro understood it. ‘No, not busy like that. We’ve been…’ He stopped abruptly. How could he possibly explain. The shows didn’t feel so ‘razzle dazzle’ anymore. ‘Yeah. Right. We’ve been busy.’

Shiro nursed his cup more tightly to his chest and whispered, ‘Right…’

‘Keith knew something was wrong.’ Allura, standing horrified at the edge of their anxious little clump of broken hearts. She turned to Shiro. ‘I think he knew. He knew that wasn’t you, somehow. I-’

Shiro surged to his feet. Coran barely managed to rescue the cup from his shaking hands. ‘Keith. Where’s Keith?’

Five faces, stricken with regret.

Allura, always brave and willing to take up her heavy, regal mantle spoke with forced composure. ‘He left, Shiro.’ 

Shiro was shaking his head at her: no, no, no.

‘He left to join the blades. 

‘No!’ Shiro roared, already charging for the door. His voice was agony. His heart a supernova.

Allura followed him, grasping desperately at his arm. He shrugged her off and continued on his march to the Black Lion’s chute. ‘Shiro, he chose to leave. He wanted to work with the blades. Shiro!’ she yanked on his arm, turning him towards her. ‘He _chose_ to leave, Shiro.’

Shiro grabbed her by both shoulders. ‘Allura. Allura, tell me that _thing_ let him lead. Tell me he- Tell me someone talked to him, _really_ talked to him before he left.’ Allura’s eyes drifted down, away. He shook her once. _‘Allura!_ Tell me you tried to stop him.’

‘I did- I-’

Shiro turned his eyes on the others. ‘“I can’t do this.” “You’ll do better without me.”’ Hunk balked. Lance had started crying again quietly. ‘That’s what he said, right? That’s what he said!? That’s what he said to convince you it was okay to let him leave?’ He thrust his finger towards the dark expanse of space. 'Out there. By himself! _'_

Lance inched forward. 'We didn't. We- he was with them. With the-'

‘Yes,’ Pidge said, arms clamped against her sides and small frame ramrod straight. ‘That’s what he said.’

Shiro issued a wordless roar, and continued for the chute. ‘I have to find him,’ he cried. ‘I have to find him!’


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written without a beta. Will try to hoover up typos soon!

‘Where is he?’

The launchpad rang with the hollow thump of Kolivan’s broad back connecting with the wall. They’d found him racing from the base as alarms blared around them, emergency beacons painting the enormous silo in sanguinary light. ‘The mission was compromised,’ he’d said. Simply. Stupidly. Now, he stared down at Shiro with flat, appraising eyes, his face utterly impassive as Lance held off the security bots.

Keith is well aware what it means to be a blade, Paladin. As are you.’

Shiro doubled over in the agony of rage. The fingers of his right hand curled against the steady rise and fall of the rebel’s breastplate where he held him fast. He thought: ‘I could kill him’. Allura stepped in before he could entertain the thought further.

‘Shiro, hurting him won’t get us to Keith any sooner.’ She strode forward to address the galra leader. ‘Kolivan, what was the nature of the mission? What are Keith’s last known whereabouts?’

Those uncanny eyes didn’t shift, but the leader seemed to weigh Allura’s request, totally at ease with Shiro’s crushing hold. ‘He’s in the logistics hub.’

‘Where?’ bit Shiro, punctuating it with a shove.

‘Sub level five. Section N. Keith had already slipped in to deliver the device when the alarm was triggered and we were separated.’ The galra leader licked his lips. His mouth was all yellow fangs and flat tongue. ‘I assume he continued his mission as much as he was able.’

‘Guys! We got a break in the wave here! We going or what?’ Lance yelled from his place near the door.

Allura placed her hand on Shiro’s arm and fixed him with steady, beseeching eyes. ‘Shiro. You know where to find him. Go. I’ll ready the ship.’

Shiro dropped Kolivan from the wall. The leader righted himself with a bitter grumble, then drew something from his hip pack. A galra console, patchy with modifications. He handed it to Shiro.

‘Keith’s. He tossed it to me before we were separated. Perhaps you should have it.

Shiro took it and turned it over. A crude ‘K.K’ was carved into the back. Shiro smiled and tutted: Keith, monograming alien tech like it was a garrison lunchbox.

He nodded, packing the console away, and turned to leave. There was nothing else he had to say to Kolivan, but the leader stopped him with a touch.

‘Paladin, Keith is a faithful agent. He knows his role in this war. If he lives, he will detonate that bomb.’

Shiro swallowed hard. ‘I know,’ he said.

OoO

The corridor contracted to a single point of light. Drones fell on him but Shiro dispatched them with barely a thought: fist through chest, palm slicing at necks, at legs, at cold eyes and reaching hands. There was the occasional crunch of a wholly organic galra throat. Lance’s shots zipped over his head, picking off the lurkers, the snipers. But he didn’t slow and he didn’t lose focus on that small window of light. The entrance to the logistics hub.

‘Shiro, wait up!’ Lance squealed, trying to keep up. ‘Shir–’

Dead ahead, a flash of white. Then the heat, the ear-crunching boom.

Shiro ducked, half collapsing onto his hands and knees, but he barely broke his stride. ‘No!’ he was up again, running, roaring, cutting through drone after miserable, murderous drone.

‘Shiro!’ Lance again.

‘Get the others!’ Shiro called back. ‘Get the others! Hail the ship!’

He could feel Lance’s hesitance like a chill draught behind him, but he didn’t have time to care. On and on he pushed, bulling through sentries like they were made of nothing more than dust. They were all fleeing, their AI smart enough to drive them from an explosion that would have stripped the entire room. Cutting down another organic galra sergeant, Shiro was finally at the door.

And there he was, stumbling through the smoke like a lost god.

‘Keith,’ Shiro cried, darting forward on legs weak with spent adrenalin.

‘Shiro!’ A lopsided smile falling into a fraught grimace of confusion. ‘Shiro…?’

He met Keith in three sharp strides, hand reaching to pull him into an embrace, but Keith stumbled, his hand arcing wide; so unlike his sublime grace. Shiro caught him immediately, checking, laughing. ‘Keith,’ he whispered, his hands running over slim arms, clasping at long, elegant fingers, palming at throat, cheek, ear. He pushed his hands through thick hair soaked with sweat. All whole, all safe. Until his shaking fingers found the back of Keith’s neck and the ragged splinter of metal embedded there.

‘No.’ He ran his hand down Keith’s back. ‘No.’ A back peppered with shrapnel.

Keith blinked slowly. His left eye was a wash of scarlet.

‘No,’ Shiro moaned, pulling Keith against him with his right hand while the left searched out the points where unforgiving steel met flesh.

Keith brought his fingers to Shiro’s face. He pressed the pads of his fingers to Shiro’s brow, then his temple. A thumb wiped messily at hot tears. ‘You’re okay,’ he said, smiled, and sank to his knees.

Shiro sank with him so that the smaller man was propped against his breast, legs bent awkwardly to the side and upturned palms mapped with blood. From here, the severity of the head wound was even clearer, and with a rush of bile, Shiro wondered how Keith was still alive at all.

‘We’re five minutes out, Shiro.’ His comms buzzed with Pidge’s voice. He switched off his mic.

‘S’okay,’ Keith whispered. His small chest laboured with shallow, rattling breaths. ‘S’not so bad.’

‘Keith,’ Shiro said, kissing the whorling cow’s lick at the crown of Keith’s head. A shimmy and a bothered grunt, then violet eyes met his.

‘I’m sorry, Shiro.’ He licked his lips. A thick string of saliva spilled free. Shiro wiped it off with his flesh hand. ‘I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find you.’

Shiro shushed him. ‘Was about time I found you.’

Keith’s eyes lingered on his, then drifted sideways, out of focus. ‘No,’ he said, dizzily. He frowned. ‘That’s not right.’

Shiro made a fond sound. Perhaps it was something like a laugh. ‘You never quit.’

Keith nodded, struggling to pull his head back up. Shiro helped him, brushing hair from his forehead. ‘I’m so,’ he choked on a breath, then recovered with a series of short, hyperventilating pants. ‘Glad you’re safe.’

‘Keith…’ Shiro sobbed through his nose. ‘ _Please_.’

Again, Keith shuffled in place, pressing his small frame back until his cheek lay against Shiro’s shoulder. Rapid breaths spilled across Shiro’s thundering pulse.

‘Shiro,’ he said, lips so painfully soft, voice like mist. His poor, broken body was shuddering with excruciating grief. He fought for breath, sobs wracking him, to fuel the impossible words: ‘I love you.’

'Oh, Keith...'

‘Shiro!’ Lance barrelled into the room, tumbling over wreckage. ‘They’re here. Coran, the others. They’re here! Did you find him?’ He stopped dead and pressed his hand to his mouth.

Pidge and Hunk tripped in behind him. ‘Allura, we need an extraction, now. We’ll meet you at the–’

A deafening roar shook the room, and the three of them staggered in place. Rubble tumbled free, hissing as it dropped into the small fires dotted about the room. A beat, and then another, bone-shaking roar tore through the base.

‘The red lion,’ Lance uttered, stunned.

‘No!’ Shiro’s heart shrank to nothing. ‘No,’ he whispered, clutching desperately at Keith. Keith, who’s empty eyes were wet and staring; waiting for an answering echo that never came back.

‘Shiro…’ Lance called quietly, meek and quivering like a child.

‘Get out,’ Shiro said, folding Keith against him, pressing his nose into hair as black as night and soft as moonlight.

Hunk made a muted noise of distress.

‘Go back to the ship, Hunk, Pidge.’ Shiro choked. He closed his eyes against the anguish of his world ending. ‘You’ve all done enough.’

He was left alone with a body that had scarcely felt smaller, nor so important.

OoO

The little console blinked in Shiro’s hands. They shook almost constantly now. Just another fracture, like his arm, like his hair. Like his heart.

He pulled up the most recent action. It was a directory of galra initiatives, with a field for names. Shiro steeled himself with a breath. He could remember the characters well-enough, could sound them out like any prisoner with half a brain. He read through the lines of search entries, row by harrowing row; the characters typed in the simple, elegant script of the empire.

_[Champ]-[i]-[on]_

_[Cham]-[pi]-[on]_

_[Tak]-[a]-[shi]_

_[Tak]-[ash]-[i]_

_[Ta]-[kash]-[i]_

_[Ta]-[ka]-[shi]_

_[Ta]-[ka]-[shi]_

_[Ta]-[ka]-[shi]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get at me on https://froldgapp.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone else bummed out that Keithy Keith is sad and alone? Aye, me too.
> 
> Get at me: https://froldgapp.tumblr.com


End file.
